Education for Environmental Citizenship in Pre-Service Teachers: Potentialities and Limitations of a Pedagogical Approach Applied at a Distance

Abstract

The 21st century can be defined as the era of “global environmental crisis”. The education for environmental citizenship pedagogical approach is a strategy with potentialities for meeting the challenge of a sustainable future. This case study sought to evaluate the effect of an ecology course, organized according to the education for environmental citizenship pedagogical approach and supported by Web 2.0 tools, on a group of Portuguese female pre-service teachers (n = 21). No previous studies resorted to this approach to organize courses for initial teacher training or used Web 2.0 to support its implementation. Thorough semi-structured interviews and the analysis of the resources produced, it was found that the pre-service teachers considered the approach to be structured, interesting and motivating, with positive impacts on the development of several attributes of an environmental citizen. The experience with the pedagogical approach fostered the didactic knowledge of the pre-service teachers, regarding how to implement activities of this nature. The Web 2.0 tools used to support the implementation of the pedagogical approach—Facebook and MindMeister—were positively appreciated by the participants. However, some identified difficulties suggest the necessity of using other platforms more frequented by youngsters. The distance-learning context imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic did not function as a big barrier to the pedagogical approach’s implementation. Suggestions for future research are presented, built on the limitations of this study.